HR Insights
October 25, 2024

Employee engagement vs. employee satisfaction: How are they different?

Knowing the difference between employee engagement vs. employee satisfaction can change how you think about the workplace experience and implement your HR strategies.

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Retention is a high priority topic for HR leaders, and the focus of these discussions is often employee engagement. But, employee engagement has a less talked about counterpart—employee satisfaction—which is just as important in driving retention. Neglecting either one of these twin pillars can leave a crack in the door for your top talent to slip through.

HR teams understand the importance of delivering great employee experiences. But it’s challenging to find the right balance between employee expectations and budget pressures. This creates a vicious cycle where employers may reduce benefits to help control spend, only then to be stuck with high labor costs from turnover and recruitment.  

Read on to understand the differences between employee engagement and satisfaction, sample employee survey questions to better understand your people, and how to build a strategy that balances both for improved employee retention. 

What is employee engagement?

HR Dive shared a study that names connection, meaning, impact, and appreciation as the four pillars of employee engagement. Each of these elements correlates employee emotions to productivity. Feeling connected to your work and seeing its meaning and immediate impact are key drivers for high engagement. And the icing on the cake is a workplace where hard work is met with high praise and appreciation.

Employee engagement is closely tied to enthusiasm. When your employees feel genuinely excited and positively motivated to work hard, they’re highly engaged. Additionally, when workers are committed to organizational values and strive to live them out, you have successfully engaged employees.

What is employee satisfaction?

Where employee engagement is about being driven by a connection to the work, employee satisfaction is about how closely the job and organization are aligned to an employee's personal career goals and preferred work environment.

Specifically, satisfaction addresses employee happiness and contentedness at work. They might ask, “Is my employer able to fulfill my work needs and desires?” 

The majority of Gen Zs (86%) and millennials (89%) say having a sense of purpose is important to their overall job satisfaction, according to Deloitte’s global 2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. Giving people purpose can feel intangible, but when employers are able to show their people respect and demonstrate how their work is adding positive value, employee loyalty goes up.  

Though satisfaction can impact retention, it’s more about what a company can do for their employees. How can you understand their unmet needs and find creative ways to solve these employee experience issues?  

Employee engagement vs. employee satisfaction: What’s the difference?

The Oregon Primary Care Association explains the distinction this way: “Satisfaction is a ‘one-way street’ (what can you do for me), and engagement is a ‘two-way street’ (what we can do together, in partnership.”

Employees can feel satisfied at your organization while being disengaged. They may love your compensation package and company culture but feel disconnected from the meaning of their work. While a satisfied employee may not be inclined to quit, they might not be producing valuable work for the organization.

The inverse is also true: An employee can feel engaged with their work’s impact but dissatisfied with their compensation or disagree with company values. For example, imagine a healthcare worker who prides themself on providing top-notch care because of an intrinsic sense of medical duty. Yet, this same worker could feel at odds with a company culture that rewards speed over quality. This person may be contributing high-value work to the organization, but their dissatisfaction creates a long-term retention issue.

Why implementing both engagement and satisfaction matters

Thinking about engagement and satisfaction separately may feel like splitting hairs in the grand scheme of work life. However, strategizing for the subtleties of employee experience can yield incredible results. Gallup research found that “teams who score in the top 20% in engagement realize a 41% reduction in absenteeism, and 59% less turnover.” Furthermore, “employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.”

Accounting for engagement and satisfaction as equal entities can improve how your organization manages employees, meets retention goals, and curbs absenteeism.

How to implement a two-part engagement and satisfaction strategy

Engagement and satisfaction are two sides of the same employee experience coin. While each contributes a unique angle to workers’ day-to-day lives, they require different strategies for implementation.

Part one: Improving employee satisfaction

Starting with employee satisfaction is important for two reasons: It gives you an opportunity to meet your employees’ needs, and it shows your employees you’re committed to their experience at work. If you expect too much at the onset with new engagement policies, employees might be less likely to succeed. Imagine the worker who already feels detached from their job; they won’t go above and beyond as you hope because their basic workplace needs aren’t being met.

Reconsider compensation

The first step toward improved employee satisfaction is reevaluating your compensation package. Send a survey to your employees and ask how satisfied they are with the benefits or options your organization offers. Based on this information, you can offer new benefits during the coming open enrollment period or restructure your options offerings.

Explore internal mobility

Another thing you can gauge in your employee survey is perceived internal career mobility. Do your employees feel like they have a future at your company? This metric will show you how workers feel about their long-term dedication to your organization. If employees feel like there are few options for career development or mobility, they may seek employment elsewhere. In fact, 84% of respondents in our 2023 Pulse of Talent research report said having a clear career path makes them more loyal to their employer.

Ask about challenges

A final item to address with your employee survey satisfaction questions is uncovering specific challenges with employee experience at your organization. Ask employees what they feel is the most prominent gap in your workplace experience, including things like skill development opportunities, company culture, peer collaboration, departmental silos, and hybrid work arrangements.

When administering the survey, you can reiterate that while you won’t be able to adapt to every suggestion, getting a pulse on employee sentiment can increase your awareness and help employees feel heard.

Part two: Securing employee engagement

While employee satisfaction is something you can directly influence with attention and resources, employee engagement partly depends on worker commitment. You can create incentives for people to go above and beyond, but it’s their choice to act on that motivation. As far as the organization is concerned, you can focus on creating an environment conducive to positive engagement, value-driven work, and enthusiastic collaboration.

So, how do you do this?

Align everyone’s goals

Goal setting is crucial to managing employee performance and defining business success. However, the mere act of creating a key performance indicator (KPI) doesn’t mean everyone is one the same page. Aligning goals from the top down establishes a clear message for employees, helping workers understand how their daily tasks relate to their team, department, and broader organization. Employees are engaged when they know their work is making a direct impact.

Create a culture of celebration

Build enthusiasm with a culture of positive celebration. Make employees feel seen and celebrated when they make big sales, reach significant career goals, or achieve success for the company. No matter how small the occasion, making a reason to celebrate can contribute to an overall happier workplace that rewards engagement.

Put values front and center

You could also create more explicitly defined organizational values and repeat them frequently so everyone knows what you stand for as a business. By highlighting the ethical standard of business, employees can sense the purpose and direction behind larger organizational decisions. You can even incorporate these values in your performance reviews, asking employees to reflect and share how their work over past months aligns with the organization’s vision.

Sample employee satisfaction survey questions 

Pulse surveys are one of the best ways to understand employee satisfaction. While collecting feedback during performance reviews and one-on-ones is important, some employees may not feel comfortable speaking candidly with their manager. Receiving timely feedback and identifying specific areas of dissatisfaction can help you focus on solutions that move the needle for your broader workforce.  

Here are some examples of employee satisfaction survey questions: 

Questions best represented on a Likert scale  

On a scale of 1 to 10, how meaningful do you find your work? 

On a scale of 1 to 10, how often do you feel recognized for your work? 

On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your work life balance? 

On a scale of 1 to 10, how often do you experience stress at work?  

On a scale of 1 to 10, how clear is our organization’s future plans?  

Questions with yes or no answers 

I would recommend my company to friends or family as a great place to work. 

There are clear opportunities for growth. 

Do you see yourself working here in three years? 

Do you feel fairly compensated for the work you do? 

Do you feel your opinions matter at work?  

Questions with an open-ended comment box 

What professional development resources would you like to be offered? 

What do you wish your manager did differently? 

What benefits do you wish were improved?  

What resources would help you do your job?  

What changes would you recommend to senior leaders?  

Using different types of employee survey satisfaction questions can help your people share more nuanced answers and give your HR leaders more targeted information to focus their efforts. 

Regardless of how you implement these satisfaction and engagement strategies, the mere act of focusing on these items can make a massive difference in the daily lives of your employees and your company as a whole.

This post was originally published on February 22, 2023 and was updated on October 25, 2024 for recency and to include new perspectives on the topic.

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